Jurors are still trying to decide the fate of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, 61, having now gone through five days of deliberations in Brooklyn.

As they examine ten separate counts against the man charged with trafficking on a monumental scale, multiple conspiracies to murder, and obtaining $14 billion in ill-gained assets, there’s no shortage of material to sift through.

In particular, the jury is looking at the transcribed testimony of Guzman’s former associates. Among these are three Colombians whose confessions were central to the trial: Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía, alias “Chupeta” or Lollipop, as well as the Cifuentes-Villa brothers, Jorge Milton and Hildebrando Alexander, or “Alex.”

Here’s a look at what they told the court.

Colombia’s Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, or “Chupeta,” arrives to a federal police station after being arrested in Sao Paulo, Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007.AP Photo/Evelson de Freitas

Chupeta

Chupeta was a leader of Colombia’s notorious Norte del Valle Cartel, which grew from the ashes of the Cali Cartel, which was dismembered by U.S. and Colombian authorities in the mid-1990s. Having disfigured his own face with surgery to conceal his identity, he cut a ghoulish figure on the stand in Brooklyn, and his testimony was fittingly horrific.

“It’s impossible to be the leader of a cartel in Colombia without violence,” the narco who was captured in 2007 after a period on the run in Brazil said on the stand, according to Rolling Stone.

Chupeta admitted ordering over 150 murders, including some in the U.S. In one case, he said he ordered one of his own cartel members killed, as well as 12 of the man’s protection unit, because the man was an apparent snitch.

“If your drugs are stolen and you don’t do an act of violence against the people who stole from you, they’re going to keep stealing from you and then they’re going to kill you,” he said.

Chupeta was a crucial early presence in El Chapo’s orbit, he said, outlining how his gang moved cocaine from Colombia to Mexico. First, it came by plane — sometimes a dozen a night — and later via fishing trawlers. From Mexico El Chapo, working then as a middleman taking 40 per cent, put Chupeta’s drugs across the U.S. border.

If your drugs are stolen and you don’t do an act of violence against the people who stole from you, they’re going to keep stealing from you and then they’re going to kill you

A series of Chupeta’s ledgers were presented in court as evidence; northbound drug boats with codenames like Juanita 8, 9 and 10 were marked, for example. He lost two huge shipments, he said, after interceptions by U.S. authorities in 2004.

“That’s a tragedy for me as a drug trafficker. In my entire history as a drug trafficker, I’d never had two ships seized by the United States,” he told the court.

Chupeta even talked of a sea captain who, because of a cocaine psychosis episode, died in the Pacific along with one of his loads bound for Guzman.

“He started to see ghosts everywhere, American Coast Guard everywhere, and he sank the ship with my 20,000 kilos of cocaine. I saw all that sea and I became very sad. I said, they’re never going to find it,” he said, according to the New York Post.

He went on to outline a dazzling array of alleged bribes and scams which helped his cartel avoid capture. These included payments to those at the very top of Colombian government and policing, he said.

In this Nov. 14, 2012 file photo, Colombian Jorge Milton Cifuentes-Villa is escorted by National Guard officers during his deportation to Colombia from the Simon Bolivar airport in Maiquetia, near Caracas, Venezuela.Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo

Jorge Milton Cifuentes-Villa

“Everything I’ve breathed and eaten in my life has been drug trafficking,” he said on the stand, outlining his role at the heart of Colombia’s Cifuentes-Villa criminal clan, one of El Chapo’s main partner groups.

Jorge Milton said he had started in the trade in 1988, as an underling with the Norte del Valle Cartel, the same group as Chupeta. He said he was involved in the logistical side of things — making sure drug smugglers stayed sober, for one.

His own brother Francisco, murdered in 2007, had once been a pilot for Colombia’s kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Jorge Milton wasn’t fussy where his drugs came from; he sourced cocaine from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the now disbanded leftwing rebels known as FARC. But he was also cozy with the rightwing narco-terrorists of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC, for whom he admitted trafficking weapons.

In this April 28, 2000, file photo, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, rebels stand in formation during a practice ceremony for the Boliviarian Movement, a new clandestine political party for the rebels, outside of San Vicente del Caguan in the FARC controlled zone of Colombia.Scott Dalton/AP Photo

Eventually things went sour with the AUC, he said. Having lived for a period in Texas in the mid-1990s, and then doing another stint in Colombia, he fled to Mexico in 2002 and went to Guzman. He did so, he said, both to get protection from the AUC and to traffic drugs with El Chapo.

He said Guzman wasn’t easy to deal with, though.

El Chapo was being given advice that authorities knew about certain seafaring cocaine loads, he said, but insisted on pressing ahead anyway. This pig-headedness resulted in two huge consignments being caught by the U.S. navy and Ecuadorian authorities.

And you felt bad about that because you promised Flaco’s father on his deathbed that you would take care of Flaco?

As well as the sourcing and shipping of drugs for El Chapo, Jorge Milton admitted in court, under cross examination, to ordering three murders.

“I feel responsible, that’s why I confessed it to the government. But I didn’t give the order to have him killed,” he said of the murder of a cartel associate called “El Flaco,” according to the New York Daily News.

“And you felt bad about that because you promised Flaco’s father on his deathbed that you would take care of Flaco?” El Chapo’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, trying to undermine the credibility of the witness, asked.

“Yes, sir,” Cifuentes said.

“Don Flaco’s murder still weighs heavily on you?” Lichtman replied.

“And every murder that I have committed — yes, sir,” Cifuentes-Villa concluded.

A map of the Cifuentes-Villa crime organization, with Alex below and to the right of their partner “El Chapo” Guzman.

‘Alex’ Cifuentes-Villa

The second of the Cifuentes-Villa crime clan of Medellin to take the stand, Alex was the man who gave us the first insights into El Chapo’s Canadian operations.

Having turned on El Chapo for a reduced sentence, Jorge Milton’s brother said he “had a friend who was Colombian-Canadian and he had clients there,” and so first started running the Canadian angle for El Chapo from 2008.

He had gone to live with El Chapo in the mountains in Sinaloa in 2007, he said, as a “guarantee” for drug money that El Chapo was sending to Colombia. The Mexican drug lord at that point sourced his cocaine from the Cifuentes-Villa clan and the Norte del Valle Cartel, and Alex was being used as his collateral.

Alex would coordinate deliveries to Canadian and U.S. wholesalers, he said, and once the cash was obtained, he would then make sure it was sent back to Colombia and Ecuador.

He said the group used various methods to get cocaine north: 6,000-kilogram loads from Ecuador to Canada via the Pacific; overland routes from Mexico into the U.S.; cocaine sent from Phoenix and L.A. north by truck to Vancouver; and even loads sent by helicopter over the U.S.-Canada border.

Transcripts obtained by the National Post show Alex detailing another Canadian relationship — an agreement for cocaine, heroin and crystal meth deals with a man he called “Tony Suzuki.” This is believed to be Antonio Pietrantonio of the Montreal mafia.

Alex also appeared to back up Jorge Milton’s instincts that Guzman did not have the tact needed to run a highly clandestine operation.

“What happened to the next shipment of cocaine from Ecuador?” he was asked by a prosecutor at one point.

“The next shipment was actually the same amount, 6,000 kilos, and it failed,” he said.

“When you say ‘it failed,’ what do you mean?” came the response.

“That it was seized by the American Coast Guard.”

“Now, what, if anything, happened right before that boat with the second shipment of 6,000 kilograms was seized?” the prosector asked.

The next shipment was actually the same amount, 6,000 kilos, and it failed

“Well, my brother didn’t really agree for the boaters to go out and load up the ship around those days because there was a lot of surveillance by the Coast Guard; and Joaquin, through his nephew, Frank, was reporting to him that that was a lie, that there was no surveillance. Joaquin said that he would respond for that trip and that they should just get it out any possible way.”

Alex was then asked how Guzman reacted when the shipment was in fact taken.

As well as offering a peep into the huge drug ring’s smuggling routes, Alex provided deep insight into how Guzman’s mountain hideouts were manned, and the lengths the group went to to ensure their safety. There were three rings of armed security guards, he said, as well as teams of maids and girlfriends.

“They had electric generators which generated electricity, obviously. We had Sky, the satellite (TV station). We had plasma TVs, DVDs, washer, dryer, refrigerator; everything that was needed,” he said.

Alex said the boss, El Chapo, moved around in a golden Chevy Suburban with tinted windows. Once, at his birthday in April 2008, El Chapo was given cars, motorbikes and a white armoured pickup truck. Pride of place, though, was a camouflage-colour Hummer with his initials, JGL.

El Chapo wore camouflage all the time, he said, and kept a camouflaged R-15 as well as a handgun with JGL on it.

“It was a medium size and it had a grenade launcher with 40-millimetre grenades. He carried a belt with his black, .38 super gun, with his initials in the handle. And with diamonds,” he said.

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